[Talk-us] Address placement (was: Fresno castradal imports)

[Martijn van Exel]

Hiya,

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Toby Murray <toby.murray at gmail.com> wrote:

> [..]

> Though the address belongs to an area, so it would make sense to keep
> > the corresponding boundary.
>
> Does it? Certainly for official records such as taxes it does. But
> this is outside of OSM's domain.
>

Certainly. An address in OSM is a node. If you must, add it to a building
so a user can derive a centroid, but a building centroid can still be
wildly inaccurate for address level geocoding.

>
> In OSM, the use case for address data is geocoding and I would argue
> that general use geocoding users would rather get a building outline
> or even a node at the main entrance of a location, not the centroid of
> the property. In Fresno this may be pretty much the same thing but in
> less populated areas, the plot might be rather large and you would
> definitely want the address data to be where the actual residence is.
>

Agreed. What you want is the main entrance to the building. Second best is
building centroid, worst is parcel centroid. The thing is, when you offer
address level geocoding, you suggest a level of accuracy that you can't
offer when you resort to centroids.


-- 
martijn van exel
geospatial omnivore
1109 1st ave #2
salt lake city, ut 84103
801-550-5815
http://oegeo.wordpress.com
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